Friends Who Are Going

Friends Attending

Friends Attending

Friends Attending

Description

Discussing Autonomy & Human Rights in Tibet

Abstract

The protection of the human rights of people living in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, ethnic relations, and the realization of autonomy, have long been challenging issues. How are they discussed by Chinese public intellectuals and rights defenders, and how could a meaningful dialogue with Tibetans in-and outside China be initiated? This event will begin with the screening of excerpts from The Dialogue / 对话, a 2014 documentary film by Wang Wo / 王我 and Zhu Rikun/ 朱日坤, a film that records dialogues among Tibetans, Uighurs and Han Chinese living inside and outside China. We will focus on an online video talk between two Chinese rights lawyers, a scholar and His Holiness Dalai Lama. This will be followed by comments by three speakers.

About the speakersDibyesh Anand is Professor and Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations and the Director, Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster in London. He is the author of monographs "Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination” and “Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear” and has published on varied topics including Tibet, China-India border dispute, Hindutva and Islamophobia, identity politics in Tanzania, and nationalism. He is an avid Facebooker and available at www.facebook.com/dibyesh.

Dechen Pemba is a UK-born Tibetan and a graduate from University College London and School of Oriental and African Studies, London. After spending several years campaigning and lobbying for Tibet in Berlin, Germany, Dechen Pemba moved to Beijing in September 2006 and spent nearly two years there, visiting Tibet several times. At the end of 2008, Dechen Pemba co-founded the website High Peaks Pure Earth, which features English translations of literature, poetry, songs and blogs written in Tibetan and Chinese. The site has translated many of leading Tibetan intellectuals such as Tsering Woeser and Jamyang Kyi’s articles. Her work has made contemporary Tibetan literature and news from Tibet much easier to access for English reading audiences.

Shao Jiang, a former prisoner of conscience for his active role in the 1989 pro-democracy movement, is a committed activist-scholar, who lives and works in exile in London. The academic interests focus on politics and media, social movement, democratisation, feminism, law in PRC and Hong Kong, autonomy & sovereignty & self-determination, international Human Rights mechanisms, comparative studies on development models and political institutions, theory and practice of Civil Society. Publications include Citizen Publications in China before the Internet (Palgrave, 2015).